Lena after Charlie

These are the first pap shots of Lena Dunham, on the set of Girls this week, since Page Six broke the news last week that Christopher Abbott “Charlie” quit Girls over creative differences:

“They’ve just started work on Season 3, and Chris is at odds with Lena,” a source said. “He didn’t like the direction things are going in, which seems a bit odd since the show put him on the map.”

Abbott’s rep subsequently confirmed the report and released this statement:

“[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire ‘Girls’ cast and crew, but right now he’s working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show.”

Don’t you love how Hollywood works? Never heard of him before. Don’t give a sh-t about him now, but they have to make it sound like he has so much other sh-t going on. What? As an understudy for Kit Harington’s understudy?

Still, many of the headlines that followed news of Abbott’s departure read like “Charlie’s gone off Girls because Lena Dunham is a bitch/he hates her/she wrote him sh-t stories” etc. In other words, it’s not that he’s a temperamental up-and-coming actor who should know his place but she’s the c-nt who should be nicer to other people when writing storylines ON HER OWN SHOW.

Is that fair? I’m not sure that’s fair. I’m not sure that if Lena Dunham were a man we’d be presented the story in the same way. I’m not sure that if Lena Dunham were a man the universal reaction to all of this wouldn’t have been to tell 26 year old Christopher Abbott, whose work you were completely unaware of prior to Girls, to Sit DOWN.